How many of you absolutely hate to change your voicemail message?  Whether it’s on your cell phone, work phone, or home answering machine, changing the voice message can be a pain!

If you are like me, I’m not a frequent voicemail changer.  I like to record one message that is universally accepted in most solar systems and then leave it alone for months at a time.  Why mess with perfection right? 

Other people, however, like to frequently change their voicemails.  Have you ever heard those people at work?  Let me demonstrate for you:

Simple work voicemail: “Hello, you’ve reached the voicemail box of ______.  I’m in the office today but am unavailable to take your call.  Please leave your name, phone number, and a brief message and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.  Thank you.”

Complicated and completely unnecessary work voicemail: “Hello, you’ve reached the voicemail box of ______.  Today is (MM/DD) and I’m in the office today but have meetings throughout the day from 9 AM to 1 PM and starting again at 2:25 PM through 4:45 PM.  If your matter is urgent, please contact ______.  Your visit to this voicemail system is appreciated and……(you get the point, right?)

To make up that voicemail message everyday would drive me insane.  The ONLY time that I change my voicemail message from the simple message format is when I go on vacation or am out of the office.  It’s in that situation that it freaks me out.  What buttons do I push to even change my voicemail?  How do I save the right voicemail?  It can be that last source of pain and anguish before you are free to enjoy time outside the office.

Well, sometime in 2006, I left on vacation and left an out of office message on my voicemail.  I thought it was simple enough.  I guess not…

I returned to quite a few messages from people either laughing hysterically or telling me “Umm, you should check your voicemail message I think…”.  After 5 or 6 of these, I started to get a complex and thought to myself, what could possibly be so wrong with my message?.  Curiousity got the best of me and to my horror, below was my voicemail message for 1 1/2 weeks at a Fortune 100 company:

“Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail box of Matt Legere.  Today is….awww crap…I hate leaving voicemails.  This is so stupid.”

This was definitely up there as a “D’oh!” moment for me and thought that it should deserve the honor of being the first entry in this series. 

Morale of the story?  Double check that voicemail message, okay?

Servant of a wicked cool God,

Matt Legere